We promote distributed exchanges but our experience with Bitshares was not so great when we tried couple of months ago. The volumes on Bitshares was abysmally low and there was a huge difference between the sell and buy which used to stall the trades. In addition to this the prices were not in line with the other exchanges and I always had to compare it with other exchanges before buying it. Due to these reasons I moved all my stash to Binance for the time being.

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Binance is a great exchange and here my reasons.

It supports a wide variety of Coins.

As of today it supports most of the popular altcoins. I have found myself answering "You can get it from Binance" more frequently for the questions like "Where can I buy Altcoin X?" For an exchange that started with a handful of coins just a couple of months ago this is a great achievement. As of today they support 224 trading pairs. It is only a matter of time before they add more trading pairs than any other centralised exchange.

It has good UI/UX in general

This is one of the deciding factors for me in selecting an exchange. It was a major turnoff for me when I wanted to tryout Bitshares as well. Binance has a minimalistic UI and scores well here when compared to other exchanges.

I am specifically calling it UI/UX as there are many small features which are very thought through from a traders perspective. Amongst these there are three items I would like to specifically highlight.

Percentages for selecting the amount

Most of the times people tend to think in terms of numbers that are easier to comprehend. So when buying or selling they would like to do it in terms of 1/4th, half, 3/4th or full of the existing coins. Binance has a nifty feature to select these when selecting the amounts.

USD prices when selecting the trading pair

Though we generally trade in BTC or ETH pairs for any coin, most of the times we still think in terms of USD. Binance recognises this and hence it has added a feature of showing this when selecting the trading pairs.

USD price suggestions in Binance for BTC Trades.png

Highlighting high volume bids and asks

High volume bids and asks are highlighted using colour coding so that it is easier for us identify and track them. This can come handy if you use Limit trading option generally, as you can add your limit based on these volumes. If you think this is all overwhelming but just want the trade to happen at the current rate then you should take a look at the "market" tab.

It saves you money, A lot if you are a trader

Binance has one of the lowest fees across the exchanges.

Deposits free.
0.1% trading fee
If you have BNB, you can choose BNB to deduct 50% trading fee.
Deposits are charged. Take a look at their website for details.

While you may not worry generally about the trading fees it can quickly escalate if you are trading frequently. So if you enable the BNB option you are paying a 0.05% which is very economical and was one of the reasons for me to switch to Binance.

Addressing the decimal coins issue

There are some complaints about Binance that since it lets you withdraw only coins in whole numbers there is a lot of spare change coins that will be stuck in Binance. But it can be overcome easily by using the BNB coin.

Binance has an official App

Binance has an official app that can be download from Play Store. The UI of the app is thumb centric and look handy. I have always used the web version and I am yet to explore the Mobile app.

Dividends and Forks

While all the above reasons can drive the adoption for Binance I think "Dividends and Forks" is what will change the game for Binance. For me this was the driving factor. I had bought some NEO and didn't want to go through the hassle of generating the GAS from a wallet. So I moved my NEO stash to Binance. Once I liked the exchange I moved all my stash to Binance. It could be the case with many more people going forward.

Binance policy about upcoming forks deserves a special mention here. Check the announcement below to get the details. They are officially declaring that they will support all the upcoming forks. This shows their long term commitment and dedication. This is a great relief to the normal users who can't keep track of all the upcoming forks or are not technical enough to get their forked coins.

Until a completely decentralised exchange comes up which has good volumes and UI I think I will pretty much stick to Binance. Other exchanges that I am tracking are Bitshares,Kucoin and KNC.

Originally written for http://www.bitfolio.org/binance-exchange-review-and-feature-list